2 months of dizziness, anxiety, strange feelings. Original dx of VN was discredited.
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Hello all,
I am an otherwise very healthy person who lifts weights 3-4 days per week and plays competitive basketball 2 days a week. On May 14th 2016 I was driving for a quick stop into work. All of a sudden my legs and hands became sweaty, I was confused as to where I was or where I was going and eventually my vision blacked out. I was able to safely pull over. When I came to (seconds, not minutes later) I went straight to the ER. They diagnosed me with a panic attack and dehydration.
2 days later it happened again (but I didn't black out). This time the ER doctor told me I may had Vestibular Neuritis. My primary care doctor later agreed. I took 2 weeks off work where I was unable to do ANYTHING but lay in bed or mope around the house. My life felt like a dream. I was sent for VRT and did it on and off for 1 month. I slowly became better, but there has always been a persistent brain fog or strange mental feeling that will not go away. On occasion I will have a blip where I feel I am going to pass out but then it goes away. I am also dealing with insomnia that is always followed by a bad day. It is present about 4 days a week and the other 3 days I feel *mostly* normal.
Last week July 14th 2016 (2 months after the initial problem started) I had a VNG with a neurotologist and saw a neurologist afterwards. The VNG came back perfectly normal and the neurologist now thinks VN is not the cause of my problems. I just had an MRI but results are pending. We will be looking @ cardiac, thyroid and autonomic nervous system workups to find out why I feel so awful. Luckly my providers are all pretty quick and I have amazing insurance.
My question is: Has anybody been diagnosed with VN or labs (which sounds awful, but at least it slowly gets better) and then had the diagnosis pulled out from under them? My anxiety (which has been a constant since day 1 of my problem) has gone through the roof because I might have something worse than originally thought! I've never had a single bout of depression/anxiety/health problems in my 30 years and I can't stop freaking out!
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becky21031 kyle17
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kyle17 becky21031
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We never fully figured it out. My doctor still think I had something viral like VN that lead to an anxiety disorder. My neurologist disagrees because vestibular testing showed no imbalance and I was still having symptoms after it should have been fully healed. He said it is likely an unknown autonomic nervous system disorder (similar symptoms to normal panic/anxiety disorder but without mental triggers...body just does it randomly on its own). All my ER doctors (3 visits) assumed I was having panic attacks as well, which I very well may have been given how scary the symptoms felt, but it wasn't until I saw the neurologist someone told me your body can output anxiety symptoms even if you're not depressed or anxious about anything.
MRI, blood tests for kidney, liver, adrenals, thyroid all normal throughout the whole ordeal. The only thing that came back out of whack multiple times was lactate which they told me meant I am chronically dehydrated.
I can tell you that at least in my case it did get better, but at 9 months I still have some bad days here and there. Especially after starting the paxil 10mg I felt good enough that I cancelled further testing with my neurologist because I didn't feel symptoms for multiple weeks in a row. I will probably be following up with my neurologist at one year to see if we can figure out why I am still not 100% back to normal, but I am definitely a fully functional human being again. I do notice symptoms tend to follow nights when I stay up too late and don't sleep enough.
becky21031 kyle17
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